It’s been 25 years since Pete Rose was banned from baseball but Cincinnati Reds Fans, Ohio Baseball Fans have never stopped the fight for reinstatement of this Legend of the Diamond!

Indeed, all of the evidence shows that Pete in fact always bet on his Cincinnati Reds to win. Pete Rose is one of the great competitors to ever play the game. It would go against his very nature for him to do anything other than bet on his team to win.

By all accounts Pete Rose had a gambling problem. Gambling addiction is now widely-recognized as a treatable mental-health problem characterized by an increasing pre-occupation with gambling, a need to bet more money more frequently despite mounting, serious, negative consequences.

Given this understanding, a lifetime ban of Pete Rose is a great injustice. He is one of the greatest players in the history of the game. His gambling conduct, although detrimental to himself, did not alter the outcome of a single game. The ban needs to be lifted.

Please Join The Cause! Grab Some Gear, Sign The Petition, and Support Pete Rose at LiftTheBan.net

Here’s an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer sharing the Keith Olberman Argument for Pete Rose

CINCINNATI — Cincinnatians need not be swayed on the Pete Rose reinstatement issue, but the infamous MLB ban got some national attention Monday night from ESPN’s Keith Olbermann on his special, “Pete Rose: 25 Years in Exile.”

If anyone was still on the fence, Olbermann more than likely convinced them to pick a side — more specifically, the side in favor of Rose.

“There’s one more thing that, to me, transforms Pete Rose’s reinstatement from some kind of paternalistic generosity on the part of you and me into an absolute moral necessity,” he said.

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In short, that thing is money.

Olbermann points to the 2015 All-Star Game in Cincinnati. If an advertiser hypothetically offered some grand sum of money to sponsor a Pete Rose event, Olbermann suggests MLB would not turn it down.

It’s a hard accusation to deny, given that the scenario he painted has happened in the past.

“What happened last time?” Olbermann said. “The 1999 All-Century Team event, sponsored by a credit card company with ballots at a chain of discount stores, and Pete Rose — officially banned from baseball, who once got the Reds organization in trouble just by going on the field of one of their minor league farm clubs — persona non grata, banned for life, Pete Rose was trotted out as if nothing had ever happened. Because the credit card company wanted the whole All-Century Team there. Even him.”

According to Olbermann, Rose was denied that same right to stand by the All-Century Team before the All-Star Game three months prior.

But Olbermann wasn’t particularly nice to Rose, either (which may have actually increased his credibility). Pointing out some apparent hypocrisy on the part of MLB didn’t get Rose off the hook for his mistakes.

“That nickname, Charlie Hustle, that was not a compliment,” he said. “He was brash, he was simultaneously a team player and an individualist, he showed people up, his personal life was erratic — in other words, today he would’ve been twice as popular as he was when he played… But a lot of people really didn’t like Pete Rose. I didn’t.”

Indeed, Olbermann didn’t like Rose. He was against Rose’s reinstatement “as late as 2004, maybe 2005.”